Rooms (8 page)

I was trying to remember what to say, how to talk to her.
How you been?
I was about to ask, when she smiled and said, “Take care of yourself, Sandy.”

“You, too,” I said.

Would it have made a difference? If I’d said, “How you been, Cissy, come on in, why don’t you sit down?” Probably not. Still: something to feel awful about.

She was found by Zulime on Christmas Eve morning. Cissy’s parents had gone north for some reason and weren’t expected back until that evening. I can still picture it: the bloated purple face against all that white, her skin puckered around the rope. Cissy had obviously planned it that way. She’d left a note with Zulime’s name on it, which Zulime recognized, although she couldn’t read a single word but that one. So a frantic Zulime took the letter to a neighbor, and that’s how the information got out, finally.

I’d had it all wrong. Cissy’s stepdad wasn’t hurting her, at least not in that way. He’d been crawling into her bed at night since she turned six and her mom had been punishing Cissy for it since she found out. All of it in that house as white as snow.

A few days after I heard the news, I woke up in a panic about the spiders, and what would happen to them. It was just barely dawn when I set out, all quiet except for a dog that started up in the distance. I don’t know what the hell I thought I was going to do when I got there, but I kept thinking how Cissy would be so sad if all her spiders froze to death over the winter. But when I got to the Barnaby Estate, I found the basement totally empty. The books, the flashlights, all the terrariums and jars—everything was gone except for that awful beach chair, and a single spider spinning a web between its metal legs.

Want to know something nuts? I took the damn thing. The spider, I mean. Cupped it in my palms and carried it all the way home and into my bedroom and put it on the windowsill where it could watch the world outside and spin. I figured it would eat flies and ants if any dared to come in, and, besides, it was almost kind of like a sign from Cissy. I know, signs are bullshit. But that’s how I felt—like maybe she didn’t blame me after all.

All of January it stayed by the window, and I was careful not to let my mother in the room since I knew she’d freak. She was pretty much always at church, anyway. And I watched it spin this enormous web that looked like frost on the pane, and finally I knew what Cissy had meant when she told me you could never really get away, just like the spiders.

Because it wasn’t just spinning, it was forced to spin, and so it was just as trapped as any of the bugs it managed to catch.

In early February, I came home and saw my mom scrubbing the kitchen, and without looking over her shoulder she said, “I cleared out a spiderweb in your room. I don’t know how it got so big.”

A week later I got a train to Raleigh, and from there to New York City. I don’t know what happened to any of the rest of them—Zulime, Cissy’s parents. Alls I know is I hope that Cissy isn’t stuck in that godforsaken place, trapped like residue on the lip of a glass.

That’s what we are now, me, Alice, and the new ghost, whoever the hell she is: smudges, crusty bits, fingerprints, like stains left over from a faulty dishwasher.

Who knows. Maybe this is the price we pay. Penance, like my mom believed in.

You want to know what we’re paying for?

Like that old song says: Go ask Alice.

TRENTON

T
renton hadn’t thought that it would be so
quiet
. Whenever he’d pictured his suicide—which he had, many times, although he especially liked picturing the parts that came after: Minna thudding to her knees beside his body and wailing; the police swarming the house and filling the rooms with crisscrossed police tape; Caroline bloated with grief; everyone at school humbled, shaken, and girls crying in the halls, hugging themselves—he’d always imagined an accompanying soundtrack.

Now, as he fumbled and sweated in the basement and tried to figure out the fucking knot, he wished he’d thought to bring down his iPod dock. But maybe it was more tragic, more authentic, in silence. Like that old quote about the world ending with a whimper, not a bang.

Still, the silence was getting to him, because in the silence, he could
hear
.

Whispers. Mutters and coughs and the occasional hacking laugh, like a smoker was caught somewhere behind the walls.

Sometimes he thought he heard his name.
Trenton
. A bare, faint rustle, but definitely a
word
. Other times he heard, with sudden clarity, whole phrases, as though someone had turned up the volume in his mind. For example, he had very clearly heard a woman say:
I
tried
talking to her already. Why don’t
you
try talking to her?
Then the voice faded abruptly, as if whoever had spoken had passed out of earshot.

He’d spent an hour last night on his laptop, signing in again and again to the shitty Wi-Fi, researching different mental disorders. He was a little too young for schizophrenia but not that young; he thought it was probably that. Good thing he was never going back to school. Or he’d be Schizo Splooge.

He’d decided, finally, on a rope. He was still curious about the gun he’d found in his dad’s study, but he didn’t even know how to tell if it was loaded. Plus he kept thinking about what Minna had said, about the woman whose brains got splattered on the study wall.

That was the second possibility: that he wasn’t crazy. That the house was haunted. But ghosts didn’t exist, everyone knew that. Which meant that the fact he was even considering it was crazy.

Back to square one.

It was Thursday, almost twenty-four hours since he’d found out his dad had left him the house, and the first time he’d been alone since they arrived back in Coral River. His mom, who still could hardly look at him—not that she ever really looked at him—had gone with Minna and Amy to do something involving his dad’s body, which Trenton did not really want to think about. He didn’t like the idea of cremation, although he disliked the idea of burial more. Stuck forever in a box.

He guessed his body would probably be burned. He wondered whether his mom would try and get a two-for-one deal. His dad wanted his ashes buried on the property. Trenton couldn’t think of a single place he’d like to be buried. Not Eastchester, Long Island, for sure.

Maybe up here, in Coral River. He had only been six when his parents separated and Caroline moved downstate, but in some ways he’d always thought of it as home. Even though his dad never invited them up to Coral River—even though Trenton had forgotten where the cups were kept, and whether the downstairs bathroom was the first or second door on the right of the hallway, and that the study was painted a deep hunter green—other memories remained, totally vivid.

He remembered struggling behind Minna through deep snow, and breaking up ice on the creek with the blunt end of a blackened stick. He remembered summer days when he went screaming through the fields to startle the birds, and how Minna showed him how to catch toads by making a cup with his hands. He remembered: the kitchen warm and smelling like rosemary; his mother’s favorite tablecloth spotted with red wine; early spring evenings on the back porch, bundled in a blanket, raw wind on his face, and candles dancing in small conical holders.

So. Definitely here. With his dad.

He was having trouble getting the rope to knot. He’d looked this up online, too, but most of the instructions seemed to be written for people who already knew a lot about ropes. Like mariners, or people in the army. His hands were shaking a little, which wasn’t helping.

Finally he got it. Now he just had to tie off the rope to one of the pipes overhead. The back of his neck had started to sweat. He could practically
feel
another pimple growing there. He wondered how long it would be before Minna and his mom came back—they’d been gone at least an hour and a half. He’d heard the phone ring at some point. Maybe they were trying to reach him on the house line.

A small part of him was stalling. He thought that if he were interrupted or miraculously discovered, maybe it would be a sign that he shouldn’t do it.

But nobody came.

He found a dirty stepstool crammed in among the clutter of boxes, old trunks, and discarded furniture; he positioned it directly under one of the sturdier-looking pipes. It took him a while to maneuver onto its seat. He’d never been athletic—he’d been practically forced off his Little League team in fifth grade—and the accident had fucked with his balance. Something to do with damage to his inner ear because of all the shards of glass. He was lucky, his doctor had told him, that he wasn’t deaf.

“I’ll bet . . . won’t go through with it . . .” He heard suddenly, the words fading in and out, like a bad radio frequency.

He removed the note from his back pocket, which he had written out carefully before thinking he should have typed it, since no one could ever read his handwriting.

The voice came in again, sharp and clear, as if it was speaking directly into his mind: “He wrote a note! Little Shakespeare. Let’s hope he has better luck than . . . ” It faded out again.

“Shut up,” he said. Then again, a little louder. “Shut up.”

His heart was beating dry and frantic, high in his throat, like a moth’s wings.

It was weird. He had hardly felt anything in six months, except for a brief, gut-tearing desire to puke when his mom had come into the basement, where he’d been playing
World of Warcraft,
and announced that his father was dead. Since the accident he could barely even jerk off—although he did anyway, approaching it with grim determination, like a soldier in front of the firing squad, bracing for the inevitable explosion.

After two fumbling tries, he managed to sling the rope over the rusted pipe. He realized belatedly that he should have fixed the rope to the ceiling before making the noose, and he felt briefly annoyed with himself for screwing up something as simple, as elemental, as suicide. He should have used the gun after all—or better yet, just swallowed some pills. But that had seemed like a cop-out, somehow, even more than the act of suicide itself. An overdose was something that could be mistaken for an accident. He was hoping that his final act would
mean
something. That it would make Derrick Richards sit up and say,
Jesus. I never knew Splooge had it in him.

Upstairs, the front door opened and closed with a loud bang. Trenton slipped. For a teetering second he was both falling and imagining that he had fallen—imagining his damaged ankle hitting the ground and snapping like a twig, imagining lying prostrate on his back underneath the noose until someone came and found him. He reached out and grabbed hold of an old wooden wardrobe, managing to right himself at the last second.

The basement door opened and Trenton’s heart stopped. It had to be Minna. He yanked the rope down from the ceiling pipe and thudded clumsily to the ground, feeling the impact of the short jump all the way to his teeth. He sat down on the stool just as an unfamiliar pair of sneakers came into view, pounding down the stairs.

“Oh!” The girl stopped short, still halfway up the stairs. Trenton felt the blood rush to his face.

She was pretty. Even with her face flaming red (which it was—at least she was embarrassed, too) and her hair cropped short and dyed some weird artificial black that was practically purple, she was pretty. She didn’t have a single pimple anywhere on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think . . . well, I didn’t think anyone was home.”

Trenton was doing his best to look casual, but he was also aware that he was sitting in the middle of a dark, dingy basement, under a single functioning lightbulb, holding a noose in his hands.

For a second the girl looked like she was going to bolt. But then she came two more steps down toward the basement. “Are you a Walker?”

Her smile was big and friendly and full of teeth that weren’t very straight. It had been a long time since a girl had smiled at him. “How did you—?” he started to ask.

“It says so on the mailbox.” She put her hands on the banisters and swung herself down the last few steps, landing neatly on the basement floor. She was no longer blushing. Trenton still felt like his skin might melt off at any second.

“Christ,” she said. “You guys ever clean down here?”

Trenton finally thought of something to say. “Um . . . who are you?” His voice was a croak. He cleared his throat.

“Katie,” she said, as though that answered his question. She waded right into the piles of old furniture and books and rolled-up carpets. While she had her back to him, Trenton coiled the rope quickly and stuffed it in between two cardboard boxes, hoping she wouldn’t see it.

“I’m Trenton,” he said, even though she hadn’t asked.

“Cool.” Katie bent down to scoop up a soccer ball and toss it to him. “You play?” Trenton was temporarily distracted by her butt, which was not so round as Angie Salazar’s but pretty close, and by the small hole in her jeans, which revealed that she was wearing cute red underwear beneath them. He barely managed to catch the ball.

“No,” he said. Then he blurted, “I can’t play anymore. I was in a car accident.”

“An accident, huh?” She was looking at him the way Dr. Sawicki, the shrink he’d been forced to see after his parents had finalized their divorce, had looked at him when he said he was doing fine—as if he were lying and she knew it, and he knew it, but she was too polite to point it out directly. Except Dr. Sawicki had normal brown eyes, nice eyes, like the eyes of a cow. Katie’s eyes were hazel, practically yellow. More like a cat’s.

Trenton wanted to ask her where she had come from, and what she was doing there, but he couldn’t find his voice. Katie turned away from him again.

“Look, Tristan—”

“Trenton.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” She nudged a roll of wrapping paper out of the way with the toe of a beat-up green Converse sneaker. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you. I can see you’re busy. Sitting on stools, playing with ropes. I get it.” So she had noticed. Trenton felt a rush of humiliation so strong it was almost like anger. She was laughing at him. “So I’ll just, you know, say good-bye and see you later—”

“Wait,” Trenton said. His voice sounded very loud, and the girl—Katie—paused at the foot of the stairs.

“Wait.” Trenton licked his lips, which felt very dry. “Why did you come? If you didn’t think there’d be anyone home, why’d you come?”

Katie hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Fritz,” she said, making a face. Her two front teeth overlapped a bit, and one of her incisors was very, very pointed. It gave her a lopsided look that was almost reassuring. “My cat. He got out.”

“What does he look like?” Trenton said.

Katie blinked. “Like a cat,” she said. She turned to go and then stopped, pivoting slowly back around to face him, seemingly struck by an idea. “Wait a second . . . Richard Walker . . . I saw something about a funeral.”

The word
funeral
sent an unpleasant vibration through Trenton’s chest. “He’s my dad,” he said, and then quickly corrected. “Was.”

“Shit. I’m really sorry.” She was staring at him in that way again—like she was trying to decode him.

“Thanks,” Trenton said shortly, crossing his arms. He turned away, slightly, letting his hair swing forward; he was aware that he had a particularly angry pimple on his left cheek, and he didn’t want her to see it. “We weren’t that close,” he added, so she wouldn’t feel sorry for him. “We’re just here for the funeral. And to clean up.” He paused. “The house is mine now.” Immediately, he didn’t know why he’d said it.

“Oh, yeah? That’s pretty sweet.”

Trenton jerked his head up to look at her and she blushed. “I mean—sorry. Sorry for your loss,” she said. “That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?” She shook her head, and her short spiky hair shook with her, like alien antennae. “I’m the worst at this stuff.”

“It’s all right,” Trenton said. He was relieved, actually, that she wasn’t pretending to be sad and solemn and knowledgeable. Like Debbie Castigliane, his mom’s next-door neighbor, who’d come over bearing a tray of take-out lasagna like it was myrrh, sitting wide-eyed in the kitchen and patting Caroline’s hand, and all the time counting the vodka bottles in the trash, feeding on the grief like a human mosquito.

“I mean, here I am, just running off at the mouth and you’re in the middle of some big family tragedy . . . ” Katie was still talking, still moving around the room, poking things.

Trenton had a sudden memory of the time when he was eleven and his dad had come out to the island. They’d met at Walt Whitman Mall and stopped in front of the Macy’s for a bit and watched a woman with a tight red apron and a smile as white as plastic demonstrate the latest advances in nonstick pans at a big booth. She flipped and slid and swirled and all the time, she never stopped talking or smiling. His dad had bought a complete set of eight pans.

Katie reminded him a little of the woman with the pans. It was dizzying to watch her, even harder to keep up with what she was saying.

“Hey.” She bent forward and, before Trenton could stop her, snatched up the rope from where he’d stashed it. “What’s with the noose? You weren’t about to kill yourself, were you?”

“What?
No
.” Trenton realized, too late, that the note to Minna was still sitting out.

“Come on, ’fess up. You were.”